


is it cool that i said all that ('cause i know that it's delicate)

by thistleandthorn



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: F/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Post-Book 5: Thick as Thieves (Queen's Thief), Reading is Healing, Sweet, oc child - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:28:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24202849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thistleandthorn/pseuds/thistleandthorn
Summary: Scenes from a marriage.--She nodded, “She was quite clever, when I knew her. And kind. She will be a good mother.”Gen pressed a kiss into her hair, “You are quite clever.”“But not kind,” she laughed bitterly. She couldn’t help but notice a flash of silver in the darkness and feel suffocated by the scent of hair oil.“You can be, Irene.” Gen’s lips were moving down to the crease in her neck, “Why else did you marry a goatfoot like me if not out of a sense of charity?”--A Post-Thick as Thieves head canon.
Relationships: Attolia | Irene/Eugenides
Comments: 16
Kudos: 75





	is it cool that i said all that ('cause i know that it's delicate)

Attolia had a theory that Eugenides was going to die in bed. Of something pathetic really, like a summer cough or old age. She never had voiced this theory. She had found that there was no courteous way to bring up that you had been contemplating the death of your spouse, especially considering her history. But still, Gen himself spoke of it at times, his predestined fate to fall at his god’s whim and Attolia had to privately disagree. She had had much time to think about death, her death, her King’s death, in the days of her recovery. A bastion of bureaucrats had nobly shielded her from the daily nuisances of running a kingdom. She had been too exhausted and disoriented to be suspicious. But she had enough clarity of thought as she drifted in and out of sleep to the rhythm of physicians’ murmurings to wonder if this was how it ended. Eugenides, she heard from an indiscreet pair of maids, had shut himself up in the library. 

He had put his hook through a piece of precious glass when he had heard about the loss of the child, she had heard from one of her ladies who sat and sewed while they thought she slept. 

He had been heard bellowing in the temple and lambs were disappearing from the local farms. That particular tidbit had been fed to her from someone in the guard’s room who had accidentally left the door ajar. 

When she was lucid enough to string all these pieces together and consider them, she realized that her theory was correct. Eugenides had fallen awhile ago, precisely (if the Thief himself was to be believed), on a summer afternoon while pressed up against a thorn bush, listening to Dite sing her silly songs. 

\-- 

The first night after the palace physician told the queen embarrassingly that she was recovered enough to engage in her ‘marital duties’ (his term, not hers, though her icy glare had ensured he never would claim it as his again), Eugenides slipped through her bedroom window. She had been waiting for him, dismissing her attendants early, though her hair was still pinned and her gown had not been untied and hung to be washed. 

She had trained herself to notice when her husband entered the room even when he slipped in noiselessly like a moonbeam. She could count on her fingers the number of nights that they had not visited each other since their wedding though that number had ticked up since her illness. Ornon reported to her that Eugenides had spent long nights in his temple, stretched in supplication to his gods, or holed up in the library looking at obscure histories of early Attolia. She had scoffed and then turned away in dismissal. But he was here now. 

She glanced at him and said abruptly, “I received a letter.” 

Eugenides moved towards her seat at her vanity, setting his hand on her shoulder as he met her eyes in her looking glass. He bent to rest his chin on her hair. “You receive many letters, my Queen.” 

“My former lady, Eurydice, sends felicitations from her new home in Ferria and the news that she is with child.” 

She could feel Gen’s grip tighten on her shoulders. “We should send them a gift,” he murmured. 

She nodded, “She was quite clever, when I knew her. And kind. She will be a good mother.” 

Gen pressed a kiss into her hair, “You are quite clever.” 

“But not kind,” she laughed bitterly. She couldn’t help but notice a flash of silver in the darkness and feel suffocated by the scent of hair oil. 

“You can be, Irene.” Gen’s lips were moving down to the crease in her neck, “Why else did you marry a goatfoot like me if not out of a sense of charity?” 

She turned to kiss him. He took her to bed. 

He had not been this soft with her for a long time, not since the night after Sounis left to fight his barons and Eddis had been left in dismay. That night, she had assumed that he was simply in her room to sleep, when he had wrapped his arms about her and whispered to her kindnesses that she did not deserve and that made her eyes glitter and shine, before he slipped between her legs. 

Tonight, he stroked her with his fingers and she tried not to wince at her tenderness or at the press of his hook beneath her knee. He hadn’t bothered undressing her but to ruck her skirts up so she could clutch at their frothiness as his tongue dipped into her. It was a slow ignition, unlike so many of their meetings that felt like explosions or a hearth being lit, she felt only small curls of flame licking up her legs. She crested with a sigh and a whimper, arching. She looked down to find him grinning up at her, his cheek resting against her knee. 

“I love you, Gen,” she said. 

He smiled, “I know.” 

“I would have loved them, too.” She almost stops herself from saying it but it slips out in her haze. 

Eugenides’ smile faltered. He sat up on his knees, “Irene—”

“I just wanted—I do not come across as the most maternal—I would have loved—” 

Gen’s body loomed over her, his face suddenly quite close, she tried hard not to flinch. He whispered in the shell of her ear: “I believe you.” 

\--

Sometimes Gen made her feel stupid. Not in the way that most people feel stupid around Attolis. 

Eugenides had beaten her to her own bed one night, when she is up late, arguing over levy limits with a particularly condescending, newly minted baron who was too green to know what danger he was treading. She entered in a huff, shooing away her maids as soon as they had dressed her for bed, before curling onto the bed. Eugenides was reclined against the headboard, in just his trousers, reading a heavy volume. He did not look up to greet her though she was sure he was watching her. He absentmindedly lowered his hook to stroke her hair. She twisted. He was still reading. 

“What are you reading?” she asked, settling back down, trying to let her shoulders relax. 

“Aeschylus.” He flipped a page. 

“Who?”

That made Eugenides look up. “Aeschylus.” 

“Do I know him?” 

Eugenides sat up fully, peering down at her in disbelief. “The great dramatist?”

Attolia sat up too, annoyed. “I don’t have much time for plays. Running a country does take up a rather lot of my time.” 

“But you didn’t read him with your tutors—”

“I didn’t have tutors.”

Gen straightened up even further, “Wait—” he started. Attolia could feel herself bristle with embarrassment and indignation. 

She continued for him, “I learned to read obviously but we used household account books.”

“Have you read Aesop?”

Attolia let out a beleaguered sigh, “Like I said—”

“Your mother didn’t read you Aesop? The animals?”

“My mother didn’t read.” 

Eugenides sat back, stunned. Attolia pushed herself off the bed, trying to control her angry flush, she strode to the door. 

“Irene—”

She turned, furious, “I may not know literature but I certainly know herbal properties.”

Eugenides was still clutching his book, looking at her with wide eyes. She could feel her nose pricking with frustration.

“Irene, I wasn’t trying—” But his words were lost as she stalked out the door.  
\--

They barely spoke at breakfast though Attolis was more subdued than usual. He disappears for most of the day, she runs the kingdom. He is in her bed when she retires to her chambers for the evening. On his lap is a fat book bound in leather. 

Her eyes glint. 

He starts slowly, “I thought you might like to read Aesop.” 

“You’re going to play my mother?” 

“No, I just thought you would find them amusing.” 

She does.

\-- 

Eugenides has a good voice for reading, it’s steady and rough with Eddisian inflections. He has a tendency to impersonate the characters and it makes her shake her head with concealed laughter. He props the books on his knees and uses his hook to turn the pages. He always insists that she lay next to him so he can curl his hand around her shoulders and trace patterns in her hair. 

They finish Aesop the third night, then move on to Aeschylus, then to a book of Attolian fairytales. She tells him several from her mother’s homeland and he begins to copy them down eagerly. She brings him a history of the Continent and they alternate chapters. She reads slowly, careful to enunciate each word, and when she glances up, he is gazing at her, rapt. By the end of their first year of marriage, they have read thirteen plays, four histories of Attolia, Eddis, Sounis, and a long chronicle of the first king of Attolia. Their second is filled with philosophy and science and medicine. Their third with Continental literature and poetry.  
She finds their ritual relaxing and pleasurable and informative but Eugenides is forceful in ensuring its continuance. Even when they are bitterly angry with each other, he still will find his way to her room with a book and shout a few passages at her before indignantly climbing out the window. It solves more than its share of arguments. She finds he cannot resist her if she appears with a book of poetry tucked under her arm.

\--

He reads to her while she is ill. She learns this later. Of course, he had not the sense to do it during the day when she was awake. She would have been decidedly less annoyed with him that first night. 

Finally, in the spring of the following year, a princess arrives. She nearly kills her mother doing so, but eventually Princess Athene slides into the world, wailing and shrieking. Athene stays in her mother’s rooms, to the shock of her ladies who had spent months preparing a suite for the new heir.  
Gen slips in every night. She does not know why this surprises her except she has never known another man so interested in his child, especially a girl. She thinks it hurts him a little when she reacted with shock that he appeared moments after his daughter is born to see them. He stays in her chambers as usual even when Athene cries and sometimes she wakes to see him cradling her close to his chest. She cannot decide if a baby makes him look older or younger than he is. He smiles at her over their child’s head.

\--

One morning, Gen swept through the palace, searching for his wife only to come across her weeping in her study. Irene rarely wept, he knew, the last notable instance being the night after Sounis left two years before. 

“Where’s Athene?” he asked. At her withered glance, he kicked himself. 

Irene sniffed, “She’s with Phresine.” 

He knelt at her feet, “Irene.” He reached to touch her face. 

She turned her face away. He tried again, “Irene, tell me.”

She finally shifted to look him in the eyes, he resisted a shudder, “I miss my mother.”

Gen schooled his face to hide his surprise. Irene continued, “She was not like me.”

Gen smiled, “There aren’t many women who are.” 

“She was—” Irene’s voice choked off, “My father was not kind.” 

That was not a surprise. Gen remembered watching from the rafters as her father abused his barons’ goodwill and tried his advisors’ patience. He waited as Irene gathered her thoughts, she hated being prompted. “And then she died and my nurse left and I know that she did not like what I became,” Irene took a shuddering breath, “I never wanted what my mother did or I never learned to and now I have a husband and a child and I find I would like some guidance.”

She wiped her cheeks. Gen did not know how to answer, he wracked his brain to finally stutter out, “I miss my mother, too.”

Irene gave him a watery smile. “Would you like to be like her?” 

“I’d rather not fall off the roof before Athene comes of age. Or force her to drink horrid homemade medicine. Or make a habit of forgetting all our children’s name days. But the rest of her parenting I rather admire.” 

Irene sighed again, “What shall we do, Gen?” 

“I was hoping that you would join me for breakfast.” He smiled.

Irene aimed a gentle kick at his ribcage, “You know what I meant.” 

“We shall muddle through.” Gen placed his hand on top of hers. 

“When we explain that Father has a hook because Mother chopped his hand off?” 

“No family is perfect, Irene.” He said it with such sincerity, she laughed. 

She suddenly grew very serious, “I do not want to be my mother.”

“I’d rather hoped not.” He kissed her and whispered in her ear, “Now, my Queen, breakfast.” 

\--

That night, Gen was delayed in visiting his wife’s chambers by Costis’ earnest reports on the latest subterfuge against the Mede. When he finally slunk into Irene’s room, he expected her to be asleep. She was not. She sat upright in bed, hair unbound and flowing. Athene was balanced between her knees and chest, sitting alert, eyes bright. On Irene’s knees was propped a book which she had opened and was reading from aloud. Without looking up, Irene said, “Close the window, Attolis.”  
He obliged his wife and joined her in the bed. Athene reached for him as he settled against the headboard and he took her with his good arm, letting her lie on his chest, grinning as she lifted her torso on tiny hands and babbled a greeting. He glanced at Irene delightedly and she smiled indulgently back. 

“What are you reading?” he yawned. 

“Aesop.”

Eugenides smirked, “Once she’s old enough, Aeschylus.” 

Irene stroked her daughter’s thin cropping of dark hair, earning a happy bubble from Athene, “She will have tutors to teach her.”

“And she will be become very learned,” Gen replied, scrunching his face as Athene grasped for his nose.

“She will be queen.” 

Gen looked up at Irene suddenly, fear, sadness, pride all bound in his face, “We shall help her.” 

Irene nodded in affirmation, “And protect her.” 

“You are not very much like your mother,” Gen said. Irene looked down at him, her expression indecipherable. Athene squawked. 

Irene rose to her knees, the book falling to the bed, looking every inch the queen she was, and bent over her husband’s body, brushing his chest and Athene’s hands with her hair. She carefully, awkwardly at this angle, removed the strap of Gen’s hook cuff and slid it off. She reached and placed it on the table beside him. She moved to lean back against the pillows, but Gen stopped her with his good hand on her neck. She tensed but he simply pulled her down to kiss her. Athene squirmed, and Irene took her back. 

Gen was still staring at her. She suddenly felt self-conscious, she shifted Athene uncomfortably, “What?”  
“Annexieus,” he breathed, “Queen amongst women.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Taylor Swift's "Delicate." I'm not really a Swiftie but ever since that song came out, I have ALWAYS associated it with Irene/Gen...


End file.
